White Gentrifier Guilt

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been tooling around Teh Intarwebs and the real world, getting a feel for real estate. Watching my mom, aged 80, continuing to grapple with the question of whether to leave the home she shared with my stepfather (answer: almost certainly not) has me thinking about what I'd like my own old age to look like, and it's possible it might not look best in the house I've got.

When I purchased my home in July, 2001, I never imagined being in it 18 years. It was meant to be starter equity, to be traded in when I found some hapless victim man - really very nice, but nothing I meant to become permanently attached to.

Well, my equity is now old enough to vote, or to die in a foreign war (but not drink!), and I find myself wondering whether it might be best traded on at some point. The house is two steep storeys, AND has a full basement: and the laundry is located all the way down there. Being of a moronic and stubborn nature, this means I regularly huck hundred-pound loads of clothes up and down stairs in varying states of safe clearance. Oh, in my fantasies, some engineer appears magically and offers to build a motorized dumbwaiter in a convenient spot. But then, in my fantasies I also have a slate-floor screened porch, a brick car port with electricity, and the house is suddenly not located in a super-white neighborhood either.

Yeah, I am 51 years old, and have realized that MOST of my life has been lived in a White Flight bubble. The schools I went to were named for old white politicians, proponents of Massive Resistance (we could have been Edgar Allen Poe high, but ohhh no - must be a politician!). The suburbs I spent most of my time in were without diversity.

So I don't really want to live my entire life in the economic, cultural, and personal bubble that is White Fragility Comfort. If I do sell, I'd love to see my place go to people who don't look exactly like me. When I bought, I was still a little afraid to buy in neighborhoods with bars on the windows.

Now, I'm more afraid to buy in those neighborhoods because, inevitably, those of us who grew up like I did are seeing how nice the houses were, that our parents or grandparents left behind in heading for the suburbs ... and they're coming back, displacing historically Black neighborhoods, denuding beautiful homes of vintage architectural details (white shaker cabinets that do not reach the ceiling and theoretically high end finishes that clash with and poorly cover older homes' interiors - what I call "stick on" kitchens), falling for ugly and disrespectful flips. Gentrification is killing family businesses and families, pricing people out of places they have lived maybe for generations.

I don't want to be that person. The notation "yoga studios and coffee shops are popping up everywhere!" in a listing, translated, means "don't be scared, lil' white folks, you can come back to the city because we're papering over what it used to be as fast as we can destroy lives!" It also means ramping up economic inequality - and, cringe-ironically, sending those who'll no longer be able to stay to cheap apartments ... or maybe the midcentury ramp crappy flips we're leaving behind now that they're no longer fashionable.

In just a few weeks' looking at my own future and driving around trying to suss out the worst of the gentification, I haven't figured out how to puncture the white economic bubble I've spent an awful lot of my life in, versus avoiding landing like a lummox on an even more delicate neighborhood ecosystem without damage.

One thing I know: whatever comes, I'll have zero use for boo-teeks, coffee shops, or yoga studios, so at least I don't have to feed THAT aspect of economic flux.

But I don't really know if there is an answer. It's entirely possible the answer is, "Sit down and shut up" - and, the fact is, I'm entirely willing to take that answer. Eighteen years in, I let my eye rove, and what I find when I come literally home is, home is a really nice place. Maybe I ought to hope my own environs might diversify with time, and save money for that dumbwaiter, that porch, that car port. A person could do far worse.

For now, I'm educating myself, and it's already working. I'm getting a feel for what the real priorities would be, what it would take to take me away from the house where I have loved my Sweet Siddy La and Pen and Goss, where I endured my father's and my stepfather's and my best friend/sister's deaths. Where I felt Mr. X's hands across my back as he held me, the day dad died, the first time he ever visited here. It wouldn't be easy to strip my home and leave these walls, these bricks, these good bones.

Maybe at some point I'll figure out the balance. Maybe (it's remotely possible) Mr. X and I might even find a home together someday.

Eh, maybe I'll be hit by a bus tomorrow. It's unlikely. But in the meantime, I gotta live.

And my place isn't a bad one for doing that...

A Poem of Sorts

Today, I wrote a poem of sorts to Mr. X in an email ...

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/2016/01/fractured-light.htmlYes, that wasn't written today. But it's my heart again today.
I want to cut my hair. I want another piercing in my right ear. I want a new tattoo.
I want you.

The thing about cutting my hair ... it would be hard for anyone who has never met me to understand just how "big" a statement that is. My being long-haired is so much a part of who I am it's almost a point of stubbornness. Well, it IS stubbornness. Resistance of my mom's utter loathing for long hair. Resistance of What is Expected of me - of women. Resistance of making anybody happy but myself.

So it's weird, these thoughts - this near-obsession I've been nursing for a couple or three months now, of cutting my hair. I'm forty-nine, for goodness' sakes. I resisted cutting it when I reached A Certain Age - now I want to chop it all off?

But here's the thing.

I look around myself, and more and more women my age - and older - are long-haired, and what they seem to be resisting is their age.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.



When I was very small, I had long hair and bangs for a very short time. Tangles and my sensitive headbone screwed that up for me. I was horrible for my mom to work with, brushing my hair - and so, in the seventies, when super long hair was in, when hippie chic was my equivalent to Disney Princess glamour, I lost my long hair and got a PIXIE cut.

I hated that cut. I hated the shags that followed, and every iteration of NOT LONG HAIR my mom dictated to every stylist she ever dragged me to. I managed longer hair in middle school, but somehow (still under maternal control as under the paternal roof) ended up yet again with Mackenzie Phillips's layers come high school. If you look at the old photos of me at the link above, though, you'll just manage to perceive - I also managed a sort of take on Cyndi Lauper's hair, senior year. The cut as produced by a stylist was as seen in the purple sweater, but as it grew out, I would razor it myself, and it was much shorter. I kept it this way for some time, but eventually I tired of maintaining the shaved-right-side.

(Side note - being My Brother's Little Sister, he of the punk rock and scariness: I did not know at all that shaving one side of my head was the least bit odd, for many years. It honestly was just easier for doing schoolwork - I didn't have to constantly throw my hair out of my own way.)

By my freshman year in college, it was plain old shaggy, and I had my eyes on the prize: out of mom's control, my hair could be under my own control. I grew it out. And grew it, and grew it.

I never got Crystal Gayle with the stuff, but it was long enough at times it'd get caught in my armpits sometimes. Heh. That grossed my sister-in-law out once, when I said that. I never could sit on it, but I've always sat BACK on it. Even today, if I didn't wear it up most of the time, it would be long enough to hang between my back and any seat-back.

But I wear it up most of the time.

Hmmm, sez I. Hmmm.

There was a time I didn't wear my hair up all the time. I liked to let it fly. I wore it differently all the time; one of the hallmarks of my style was the time in my teenage years when someone said to me my hair was different every day. I liked that.

These days, it is limited to knots, braids, and very rarely I'll do a barrette on top (and then I end up knotting the hanging length half the time) or a hair band (and then I end up knotting the hanging length more than half the time).

Even when I am alone at home, I twist it out of the way. The stuff is almost never down.

And these women - a lot of them even older than I - with long hair. I don't like their aesthetics. I don't like the sense they're clinging to youth gone by. The sameness. The sadness. I never had much problem with ageing, even though people do tell me I am relatively poor at it. Jamie Lee Curtis's story about Jessica Tandy has long stuck with me. JLC kicks copious amounts of bootay. And she has uber-short hair: undyed.

Hmm.

And the older I get, the more keeping up with my roots annoys me. I got to about an inch and a half of white showing last month, and my most recent dye job is already growing out. Not obvious to anyone but me - YET - but the point is, the upkeep is constant. And it takes two bottles for me to dye my hair.

Mind you - I LOVE my contrasts - the fair skin and dark hair. The light brown eyes and freckles. Playing with makeup and coming out Morticia.

Hmmmm.

I have said for maybe 15 years now, that when I get around 50 and I have "enough" white hair (my hair is WHITE-white, like my mom's and my grandmother's; not steel, not grey), I'd strip it and cut it. I had images of a 50s style and a body wave, something soft and sophisticated.

With the onset of the earliest symptoms, I think, of menopause, have come more concrete ideas in this direction. It began amorphously - jokes with my friends about using bright color in it, once I do go white. Random interest in certain haircuts. The realization of just how edgy it could be, even before I let it go white. A glossily dark bob, curled. A crunchy zhush of short, crispy layers, framing my face. Letting the bangs grow out. One long, soft dark wave.

And, frankly: the fun I would have, shocking the crap out of everyone I know. Not least of all: my sainted mother. She would love me to cut it, of course. She'll both hate and laugh with anything more subversive I do. She will never believe it. That's a fun mental game, right there - just showing up one day, shorn and  super stylish. Crazy colors or spiky bits or no, she would DIE.

The thoughts: they have become more specific. More focused. And they're sticking with me.

The Gift of the Magi
I had a beautiful moment recently with my beloved friend Cute Shoes. She gave me an absolutely stunning hairpin; a vintage Deco piece, with grey rhinestones. Graceful. Meaningful. Gloriously beautiful. I had my hair down the day she gave it to me, and immediately put it up. I've worn it several times since.

I had all but set an appointment for a cut that very Thursday. Of course I could not bring myself to do it, suddenly.

A few days later, I researched ways to wear a hairpin in short hair. (This is, by the way, almost as tricky as researching ancient Carthaginian women's names.)

The cut I had in mind, I don't know how well it would work ... but hair grows, too. And I have many styles in mind; I plan to change things regularly.



It came over me again today - how exactly I want it to be, how I'd need to explain to a stylist about the inconvenient cowlick on the wrong side. Working out twice in a fitness room filled with wall-sized mirrors, I mentally pictured it. Looking at those high school pictures, I looked at that short-on-one-side thing.



Tonight, I'll let my hair down. And leave it.

And tomorrow, I'll be wearing a beautiful, gorgeous hairpin. And I love you, CS. And I'll figure this thing OUT.

EXPOSURE

It's not always a good thing for your writing to be seen. Janet Reid's post today somewhat touches on this theme - in a classic example of the old "How can you know my writing isn't good enough!?" rant which exemplifies where the writing is weak.

My own example today was at work. In an interoffice envelope from some other quarter of the company, I received a letter forwarded along to my boss, but actually addressed to "Mr. Contact Unknown, Owner" (incorrect company name).

Rest assured that my boss will see this letter, and its envelope - both identically incorrect - but not for the reasons hoped-for. I shared the thing all over my corner of the world, because everybody needs a laugh. The consensus was twofold: one, that we NEED TO DO BUSINESS with these folks as quickly as possible. And two, that my planned response of "Actually, it's Ms. Contact Unknown" is the best possible one.

Best. Mail merge. Ever.

Also, nice putting your best foot forward, company.

Image: Wikimedia

All this has only the most cursory relation to writing, or even to Janet's post, linked above. Mostly, I'm sharing it because it's funny, and I hear humor is a good way to prevent blog readers' boredom. And I care about y'all. I really do. I don't want you coming here getting bored.

So you're welcome. Mr. and Ms. Anonymous Reader. Happy Monday.

Pride and Prejudice and Privilege

Of all the literary scandals I've read in my day, holy heck is this a fascinating ethical exploration.

This cropped up in Janet's blog today, and for once the result was a comments section I did *not* find comfortable to read, so I am not linking it. It is only where I learned of this anyway, so go to the link above if you are curious about the deeper details. Skip over a LENGTHY intro all about rules, and most of a long series of paragraphs beginning with "I" and get to the one that begins with "I chose a strange and funny and rueful poem" and read from there.

The crux of the issue is a white male poet who submitted under an Asian (or Asian-sounding; I am not the one to verify other cultures' nomenclature) name, and whose poem was chosen for the Best American Poetry 2015 ... admittedly and partially because of this.

The examination of the man who made this choice, and both his culpability and the reasons for it, is devastatingly and honorably honest in the rarest way.

(T)here was no doubt that I would pull that fucking poem because of that deceitful pseudonym. But I realized that I would primarily be jettisoning the poem because of my own sense of embarrassment. I would have pulled it because I didn't want to hear people say, "Oh, look at the big Indian writer conned by the white guy." I would have dumped the poem because of my vanity. ...  I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise.

That last sentence had to be an incredibly difficult conclusion to reach, and the conclusion of the post itself, Sherman Alexie's examination of his own identity, is a great example of integrity, whatever else the controversy may have borne for him.


It hasn't occurred to me to blog about this, but somehow it seems relevant in a sidelong way now.

At a very different point on an identity spectrum that spans not a line, but an entire plane and perhaps three dimensions, lies one Caitlyn Jenner. I've found myself watching a good deal of "I Am Cait", the reality show she launched along with the revolution in her own identity. It's the sort of thing I wanted to resist; frankly, it was unformed but in my mind to ignore the whole show attendant upon her transition, thereby proving my lack of prejudice (and maintaining a mile-wide perimeter against anything even Kardashian-adjacent). But, thanks to its ubiquity across many channels and many weeks, I caught the Diane Sawyer interview, and ended up reluctantly intrigued.

The theme of the reality show that has struck me far more than the splashy headline of "ooh, trans person" has by far and away been its examination of privilege.

Note that I do not say HER examination of privilege; because she went into the show with expectations that she would be exploring the process of gender transition, dealing with her family and her identity and the pain and the liberty she now has in her own skin, which has finally come to resemble the sense of self she's always harbored and hidden and lived with all her life.

But the fact is, Caitlyn's role - which she seems eager to adopt and live up to - has become that of an avatar for an entire "community" of transgender people ... and yet, "community" is a foolish term, because inherently the deepest problems with transgender individuals is that of isolation and even self-denial ... and yet, Caitlyn's experience is like NOTHING any other has ever experienced, or probably ever will.

For one, Caitlyn is transitioning at a time in her life which is not, perhaps (I am no judge here) typical of the experience.

She is also essentially chairing a public discourse and her own personal experience from a position of wealth and power pretty much nobody else in her position has ever possessed.

And the show is illustrating, in pretty clear detail, just how powerful Caitlyn's privilege is. The new trans friends with whom she is surrounding herself are keeping her pretty honest at every turn ("Why do you keep saying THEY when you talk about trans people? You are a trans person!" ... "You keep saying how normal we are. This is because you are aware of the freak factor." ... "YES, many trans women turn to sex work; not a lot of us have the privilege you do, and being trans can make it harder to keep a job, or lose you one if you have it." and so on). They are begging her to look at the power she wields, having been Bruce Jenner for as long as she felt she must or could hide - and to use it.

In a year when I've spent so much time examining my own privilege, to watch someone with this much of it trying to do the same, and doing so earnestly, if sometimes imperfectly, has been an unexpected lens through which to examine someone's transition into a physical body that aligns with their sense of self better than the one issued at birth.

Caitlyn has made a hell of an avatar. Statuesque and showing pride as well as vulnerability, gorgeously attired and constantly attended, the chrysalis has opened and someone unexpected and in some ways both spectacular and delicate seems to be emerging.

I don't essentially admire Jenner as a woman, any more than I did before we knew she was, particularly; but I respect her stepping up, acknowledging her power in a position which for most is the opposite of powerful, and trying to do good. Even for her, it cannot be easy; just as admitting his bias has hardly been easy for Alexie, in a situation he could have avoided if he chose to.

Caitlyn Jenner could have avoided this ... and yet, could not. Not while living with the fullest integrity.

Sherman Alexie could have avoided the controversy, too ... and yet, could not. He clearly placed honesty higher than comfort, and that is never simple, never easy.

Drafting

In the continuing series of posts on drafting a short story, today I haven't gotten beyond the intro still - but have begun to at least blearily take some of the advice from previous comments.  To wit:

She ran from the king's house, weeping.  Cholwig stood in the stockade yard, watching the small building from the deep shadow within the wall.  He waited only a couple of minutes, then went and knocked at the door.
Childeric lay on his back, peering into darkness unbroken by the upset of his partner's departure.  The room still smelled of sex, but the king lay inert - not relaxed.
Cholwig wondered when last Childeric had slept.  He drank sometimes, and sometimes not.  He took women to his bed almost without fail - some dutiful, some hateful, as this night's companion apparently had been - some even eager.  None of it exhausted him, none of it gave him any rest.
He lit the little rush lamp on a tiny table, the only object of furniture in the cramped royal closet other than the bed.  "Dominus, they are angry with you."
Childeric's eyes crept across the wood of the ceiling, pushing toward Cholwig with little purpose and less speed.  "One too many wives?" he drawled, "Or one too many daughters?"

Fire away with feedback - but keep in mind this still doesn't progress beyond the intro piece, and my wee paltry little brain is a bit compromised today.  Oh, and also - this is still a draft, y'all.  Drafts don't get purty in a hurry ...

Drafting - An Exercise

Yesterday at RavenCon, I joined the writing workshop.  Unable to join the second session today, I still followed through with my homework.

The assignment was to write an intro to a short story, 100 words or fewer ("not 'LESS' - and if you don't know the difference, you should not be here" ... fantastic), providing the reader with a character, a setting, some kind of action, and a hook to lead in to more reading.

Here are my two drafts:

She ran from him at last, weeping.  Childeric rolled onto his back, peering into the darkness, seeing more from memory than with light the long grain of the wooden roof.  His bed was redolent of her.  Of him.  Of all the remembered women, girls.  Those who had wept, and those who cried out with pleasure.
Still he could not sleep.  Even with drink, even slaked with the release before the girl’s desertion.
And the night wore on.
When his eyes were creeping across the wood in morning light, Cholwig came to push the king back to the work of the day.
“Dominus, the men are angry with you.”
“One too many wives? Or one too many daughters?” Childeric drawled.

***

She ran from the king’s house, weeping.  Cholwig stood in the stockade yard, watching the small building from the deep shadow within the wall.  He waited only a couple of minutes, then went and knocked at the door.
“Your men are angry,” he said without emotion, but an unmistakable warning.
Childreric lay across the bed from which he’d just released the reluctant girl.  “One too many wives?” he drawled, “Or one too many daughters?”
Cholwig fought his frustration with his king, with his lifelong companion.  “It’s all the same.  And they are weary enough to betray you.”
Childeric was curiously sluggish to the alarm.  Yet he would have to leave, if he were to survive.  The question was whether he cared to.

The feedback I received went along these lines:

• That (of course) introducing a rapist as the central character is a bit of a trick (as you who've been here before will know, that was born of this bit of musing).
• Tighten or focus the POV - my solution to this, oddly enough, was to remove the omniscient somewhat from Childeric, though he will remain the MC.  When the MC is offputting, distance seemed a wise solution.  This being only draft #2 - and this being only the first 100 words - this too may change.
• Provide a reason to care for Childeric ... I may not have done this, but I provided a conduit to him in Cholwig's eyes.

The work is nothing anyone would ordinarily ever see.  It's draft, in no way fit for public consumption (even an appealing MC is still not presentable at this stage) - and a lesson in the profundity of editing.  In a simple 100-word snipped the entire piece changed radically, even though the same story is being told.  The action did not change whatsoever, though the timing was altered a little in version 2.

I'd be interested in any kind of comments these snippets might produce.  Content, process, effectiveness, tangents - all are welcome in the comments.  Please don't be shy!

Not New Hair!

My fifth grade teacher used to make much of us kids when someone got a haircut, gleefully greeting us with "New hair!" if we came in cut or curled or the like.  Today, let's take a look at *old* hair - and styling.  From the link here, it's possible to find not only ancient Roman earring styles (DIY!), but also still more forensic archaeological hairstyling theories and demonstrations.  My personal favorite, ironically made impossible for me just today by a *new* hair(cut), is the Aphrodite Knot, and Agrippina the Younger's is also very nice (if also for longer hair than I have , as though I've kept the overall length, I'm now all full of layers).  Be sure to look a the "you might also like" tiles if you're interested.

Thank you, Leila, for leading me to this place by way of the Vestal Virgin hairstyle link!

These links, by the way, lead mostly to somewhat long-for-YouTube instructional vids for very intricate and ancient hairstyles.  At 9 to 17 minutes, they will mostly be of interest to the *very* curious, or those with a particular interest in hairstyles from the ancient Roman, Renaissance, and 18th/19th-century Western eras, or cosmetology and its history.  As many require hair from waist to even THIGH length, these aren't going to be for most of us - yet the ideas are fascinating and could be adapted.

One aspect of many of these is how common actual sewing is in hairstyling.

Having long hair myself, and a brother who carves, I've long used hair sticks (what Janet Stephens, the hairstyling archaeologist refers to as bodkins).  When men or women who would never use this method ask me how I make them "stick", I usually note that it's something like sewing - use the point to pick up hair on one side, cross over the twist of hair to be secured, then pick up another section on the other side.  Hairstick styles generally depend on some similar form of "stitch" or others.

The extent to which I've used stitching in my hairstyling is NOTHING compared to the actual needle and thread methods theorized/shown in Ms. Stephens' demonstrations, and it's kind of gratifying to watch clear, simple instructionals on methods I never would have figured out, but which both fascinate me and also bear out some of the nebulous ideas I've had about "how it's done" ... or how it *was* done, once upon a time.

Image found at:  tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com
(c) trendstop

I might have to get into some of the ribbon-lacing and woven hairstyles I've known about and studied a little bit in the past.  Some of it not such distant past (or, perhaps, actually the future ...):

Unstifled

Today I had a conversation which damn near shattered me, precisely because it has meant so much to me recently that I did not have this coversation sooner.

I don't feel freed.  I don't feel empowered.  I have, it may be said, an almost physically painful shortness of breath, and the most intense headache I've had in some months.



But I do feel *hope* - that what I chose to do to myself ... simply won't be a choice for for anyone again.


***


While I chose to leave at a mildly scoffing dismissiveness from the manager I spoke with "informally" at the time this happened, I know frankly and simply what happened was sexual harassment.  For me, this does not translate into lawsuits or punitive action against my company - I stayed on the alert for any escalation, and when my extreme and instant brusque, cold, keep-it-professional attitude apparently headed off any further "hopes" this person had in my direction, I nursed a quiet grudge, contenting myself with feeling I didn't have to do anything.

It was probably within the last eight or ten months I witnessed a woman having to speak with the same man, who was clearly discomfited having to deal with him.  I knew her well enough to ask her if he had disturbed her, when we were alone, and she did not specify what he had done, but it was clear that she was profoundly creeped-out by him.

And so, I know:  it's not just me.


So.

When I was cc'd on a note from a higher-up responding positively to this person's interest in a permanent position with my employer:  I felt I had to say something.

This was a difficult decision to make, but not a lengthy one, and, rather dizzyingly, the opportunity to have the conversation came up extremely quickly.  From email to decision to dread to conversation:  something under two and a half hours.

Today was simply bloody difficult.  I had to have a conversation I stipulated at its outset I never wanted to have.  I had to present the situation, the context of why I was bringing it up, AND the context of why I had never brought this up before, professionally and coolly, honestly and somewhat dispassionately.

And I did.  And it is done.  I gave permission to the higher-up to use my name; and have already spoken with someone in HR, setting a time on Wednesday to have a conversation about this.

The worst of it is over - the event itself, long ago.  The conversation, today.  I am no longer stifled.

And I pray:  no other woman will have to make this choice.


***


And so for me, tonight ...  If not peace and power - then Big Bang Theory, set to "play all" (or perhaps a new purchase on Amazon, of a new season I can stream in my digital library) - and, if not the satisfaction of feeling whole ... then at least the contentment that I've done the right thing.

I am so blinking exhausted.

Oh BLOGGER

I love the stats function here, it's almost as poor a tool as Loti Noti.

Today, for instance:  I have had 7 pageviews.

35 of those were on Windows machines, with multiple views also coming from Linux, Firefox, Safari, and Mobile Safari, among others.

FUN WITH MAYUTH.  And Blogger is funnin' with my paltry brainmeats.

I'm going to take my stupid back and my stupid, distracted, and slightly depressed brain to bed early again tonight.

Lost and Not Lost

The internet is an amazing tool for obliterating the barrier between ourselves and the past.  It's rather a terrifying one for obliterating barriers between people (there are friends and others from my youth it took me many years to manage to lose touch with, and it is a little daunting to realize just how easy it is for that effort to go for naught, these days), for creating personal and financial vulnerability, for learning things it once might have been impossible to ever find.  For reunion with memories long past.

I did something this past week which represents both something I find kind of mystifyingly wonderful, and which also in a way goes against (some of) my beliefs.


I saw a photo of a weir the other day, and was brought to mind of the source from which I learned the word.  It was a book about a British boy, coming of age, and growing in friendship and attachment to an elusive girl he saw when exploring a weir out in the country.  The book was called The Otherwise Girl - something I'm pretty sure I bought at a library booksale when I was twelve or so - and one of those books I read at an age, and IN an age, when reading could still be so intimate and so singular an experience that it felt nobody else in the world could have ever known the story.

Reading was not, in the 1970s, especially for kids, really a blockbuster experience.  YA lit was backwater stuff, not the driving force in the publishing market it is today.  Until I discovered "Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret" and S. E. Hinton, I was unaware of anything I had ever read (other than the Bible) which had ever been read by anyone else.  And so books, for me, were an extraordinarily personal adventure.  Every story I had ever read was, for me, precisely and wholly my own object and memory.  I still write as if, all marketing notwithstanding, my work is unheard and unseen, existing only for one reader - for myself - or for some imagined fourteen-year-old-boy staying for a summer at his great aunt's, who discovers this dusty old thing on a bookshelf and reads it, and somehow loves it.

What I mean to say with all this is that  The Otherwise Girl  represents something of a personal genre, a story only I have ever known, and which, because I lost it decades since, was one of the beautiful ephemera of the universe.  In some way, that enhances its strength and its appeals, its soft lines and gentle lessons, its eerie loveliness.  Its absence, like that of my youth itself, is a part of what underscores its place in my heart ...

The Otherwise Girl is, of course, not the only story of its kind for me.  The Underside of the Leaf is another.  A seamier tale.  A memory of reading something, still back in grade school - I must have been about eleven - which seemed shocking and almost forbidden.  These coming of age stories came when I was very young - before the modernity of Judy Blume, or the edgy sixties-hip of Hinton's Outsiders.  They came before I even aspired to literary sophistication, when I was very much a little kid.  They came to me utterly innocent, and told me tales both of sweetness and of tasted sorrow.  I recall, from Leaf, the intensity of feeling I had about a girl liking a boy who somewhat frightened her.  I recall a description of his sweater.

It's never occurred to me to attempt to recapture these fragments, the flotsam of a childhood I bless but am content to know has been decades-since left behind.


***


And yet.

This past week, I ordered copies of both these books.  The picture of the weir did it - and got me looking, too, at Madeleine L'Engle too (great books, and fantastic, gripping titles).  I went to Amazon to buy the Book of Common Prayer I've had on my list for a bit now - and ended up coming away with these two, too.

Otherwise has arrived already.  It is the same edition I had then; a blue upon blue turquoise cover.  A girl in shorts.  A ghostly reverse image.


I wonder whether generations since my own will ever even have the opportunity for loss like this, the kind of progress through life that shapes my own entire existence, the kind of irretrievability which overrides free will and exerts itself merely by dint of time.  Life isn't the quiet backwater it once was, and I wonder what the experience will mean for my nieces - for the marvelousness that is nostalgia, the beauty of sentiment, with its ghost of melancholy making it such a beautiful feeling.

I try not to feel generationally superior - that These Kids Today have lost the very experience of loss.

But I do wonder.  Ephemerality is at the core of life's urgency and emotionality.  Being able to order up one's own preadolescence for home delivery is both wonderful ... and itself almost wistful.  I won't recapture the girl I was thirty and more years back.

And yet.

I never lost her, either.  She's still such a part of the woman I am day to day.  And if I didn't bless the fact I could give her a little nibble - could find these memories at all - I would not have placed that order.

I believe in the impenetrability of lost youth.  But I also believe in the joyousness of memory.  And reading.

Do It. I Dare Ya.

Try typing rickperry.com into your browser.  See where it takes you.  (SFW and safe for nieces to ... well, insofar as the GOP goes ...)

Holy frijoles.

Yeah: No.

The vids LOOK like they really should be helpful.

But apparently they are produced by people who (a) have visibly sturdier lenses than the little cellophane numbers I am dealing with and (b) do not blink with any kind of strength at all.

Sigh.

At least it was only $22 bucks.  But I do wish I had purchased several years ago, when they still made hard SFX lenses.  Blah.

Seriously: TELL Me the Magic Trick!

For two days now, I have been attempting to put on the colored contact lenses I bought for Hallowe'en.  At this point, I would gladly pay someone ten bucks to come over to the house and do it for me, because - it's not that I lack for patience.  I have tried something like thirty times.  It's not even the (given) fact that my blink reflex is fast, and strong.  It's that the lens itself is so thin, and so flimsy, I can't even get the thing to adhere to my eye in the first place.  Not once in two days have I even come CLOSE.

How do people do this every single day?  I ask not in the context of "how do you stick something in your EYE?" - but in the context of "how in the heck do you make something so terribly dainty stand up to its own little specialized job at all?"

I think I must have attempted every possible angle known to man.  Cannot manage this.  I'll be YouTube-ing vids on this shortly, it is that pathetic and ridiculous!

I want evil black eyes for Hallowe'en.  I can't seem to manage to insert them.  Blah.

Take the Con II

This holiday weekend has been just the concluding part of what has actually been a vacation; I took off on Thursday and Friday too, so am in the midst of five days off and enjoying it very much.  The highlight, of course, has been JRW's conference.

The marquee guest this year, Kitty Kelly, was unable to attend, as her husband was recently hospitalized, which is more than an understandable reason for a change in plans.  One of the agents, too, had a very late-breaking reversal; after already being on his way to come to Richmond, Jason Allen Ashlock learned of a death in his family and had to turn around.  Apparently, he has committed to reach out to each one of us he had been scheduled to meet with at the Conference, to set up a Skype or phone call or some rain-check meeting.  I call that a pretty incredibly generous gesture, especially given the circumstances, and am duly impressed by commitment like that.  It's unlikely I'm alone in wishing peace and sympathy for his family.

And so I started the conference "off the hook" in a way.  My agent meeting was off, one of the other best agents there I've already queried, and the publishing pros there have nothing to do with historical fiction.  In a way, the years the Conference don't offer me any direct prospects are freeing, because they provide all the benefits of the education, support, and enjoyment the Conference always does, and skip some of the stress.  It's always fun to set a meeting, of course, but with as much work as I've been putting in lately - and with the fact that I am working on some revisions for an agent interested enough to put me to work on them (this is me, totally not squeeing and being 100% insufferable that I am working on revisions for an agent, by the way ...) - it was nice to embark on the event without pressure to perform.


I have to say, thanks to a couple of the Sarcastic Broads, to JRW's excellent Administrative Director, to all the volunteers, and of course to the guests, it was a great conference this year, not missing a beat even if it was missing a planned speaker and agent.  It was relaxed and rich, and went off without a hitch.  Smooth as silk - and fun, to boot.

Perhaps the unique feature of JRW's conference is the accessibility of the participants.  Guests who come for this event are asked to stay for all of it, to eat lunch with everyone, to be available in the halls and between their panels:  you don't necessarily need to have an appointment with an agent to have access to them.  Last year when I talked to Michelle Brower and she asked me to query her, it was not in a formal pitch 5-minute meeting, but just a chat about a colleague of hers after a panel.

I've learned that sitting out the panels, too, can be relaxing.  If one of the ones I am thinking about is overcrowded, or in the dark room with the uncomfortable chairs, or if I have just taken SO many notes at the last one and want to decompress (or, on years I am having a meeting, if I don't want to disrupt a discussion by coming-and-going from it), it can be rewarding to stay out in the lobby and chat with people as they're about to meet with an agent, or - amazingly - actually work on my writing!  The venue is a very nice one, and this year the weather was extraordinarily beautiful, so sitting out a period was a bit of a zen relief.

This year, sitting one out, I met Kevin Hanrahan, whose name I advise everyone to remember.  His novel is one I can't wait to read, and suspect an awful lot of us will embrace.  On top of being a likely success as an author, he's also an active service member, a very nice and generous guy (he agreed to read my battle scene!), and a family man.  It'd be impossible not to wish the guy excesses of success, and with the idea he's pitching, he promises to find it.

I also got to chat with Mike Albo, who, on top of being funny, turns out to be ANOTHER one of those friendly, supportive, enthusiastic, and infectious people the Conference is simply riddled with.  Likewise Joe  Williams, who did not have my dad as a professor (hee), and yet somehow managed to turn out to be a dazzlingly smart and also very nice guy nonetheless.

It's almost a bewildering abundance, the talent and charm JRW seems to attract.

The exception to this statement is notable, actually.  There was one guest this year who put on a show such as I've never seen before at any JRW event.  At one of the largest panels I attended, we were treated to a guest literally positioning herself with her back to the moderator, rolling her eyes at said mod, evincing obvious and 100% unnecessary antipathy quite publicly, and making an immense show of both boredom (whenever she was not speaking) and overdramatic snobbery.  It was pretty amazing, and devastatingly ugly.  The moderator largely on the receiving end of this Mean Girls snottiness evinced zero awareness of it, either because she couldn't see the show (this person's back being firmly to her) or because she is, you know, a GROWNUP and not feeling the need to engage pubescent antics.  I always liked this moderator, but am now firmly On Their Side now, and entirely disgusted by a guest I would hardly have guessed to be a petty, clique-ish little wench.  And, yes - I'm aware this succumbs to the clique dynamic.  But she started it!

I wasn't alone in noting her rather stagey antipathy, nor in being throughly put off by the show.  It was the single most revolting piece of behavior I've ever seen at any JRW event - and it was, in fact, the single piece of revolting behavior I've really ever seen at all.  (Poorly socialized people with unfortunate interpersonal skills really do not hold a candle, though certainly there've been a couple of those.)


***


The closing event of the weekend was Pitchapalooza - an event not ideal for the faint of heart or weak of knee.  Like the First Pages Critiques, this challenge asks writers to bare their works.  Unlike first pages - Pitchapalooza is not anonymous ... not done for you by readers onstage ... and is utterly direct.

Also unlike first pages ... it turns out that the likelihood of finding your name drawn out of the box, to present your pitch live in front of everybody, aren't so small.  With First Pages, which take a little while to read, and a little while to discuss, if they get to read as many as ten of them, it's a bumper crop.

With Pitchapalooza, there's a one minute limit on each author.

So there is time for a whole lot of people to read.

So the odds go way UP, that you will get chosen.


All of this is irrelevant to me.  Because the odds of being chosen FIRST out of the box ...

Turned out to be 100%, for me.


Leila tells me the look on my face when they read my name FIRST was worth a million dollars.

I can say this:  being chosen first was pretty painful!  But David Henry Sterry and Arielle Eckstut were remarkably generous - they clearly know what this is like for writers - and asked for a round of applause for me before I even began, and were pretty kind (and VERY HELPFUL!) in providing first-feedback.

I'm glad I didn't have to follow Kevin Hanrahan.

I'm sorry I didn't get to hear some of the repeat comments they gave to most participants, so I could edit briefly and address some obviously typical issues with pitches.

I'm interested by the fact that some of what my work overall needs done on it is common to what they observed about the pitch itself!  (It's well written and *rather* engaging, but needs "lusciousness" and really has to grab its audience harder by the lapels.)

I'm embarrassed that I was a bit disheveled at the time we got started, and didn't have time to acclimate to the event and prepare myself for it, and so stood there looking wildly, NAKEDLY nervous, my hair a bit of a mess, and my entire body shaking while everybody watched and at least two cameras TAPED ... heh.

But I was gratified by the kindness of several folks afterward (see also - the comment on my post below, from my Frank-ophilic friend Jeff Sypeck [this is as distinct from francophilic, fella babies]), which included Mike Albo saying the book sounds cool, and a girl named Cathy who said she missed my actual pitch but heard the feedback and wanted to know about the book, and Joe Williams, to whom I said I liked his pitch better and he said he liked mine (... UM ... and can I just say, the White House correspondent for POLITICO liked my pitch better than his - this, a guy so insanely calm and poised I was wishing I'd taken some sort of drug just so I could have appeared less of a trembling wreck and wondering how he did that).

I mean, I stood in front of Karl Marlentes and gave this speech.  I stood in front of Michelle Brower (ON the judging panel, by the way), who's already (so generously!) rejected my query.  I stood in front of all my Broads, and EVERYONE there (including that one Mean Girl) and shook, and faltered, and had trouble breathing, and managed to get through it.

FIRST.

And took ten minutes to come down.  Hee.  My handwritten notes on what they had to say are hilariously quavering, the pen half-digging through the page in physical translation of the mental pressure!


I have to say - Pitchapalooza?  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  Woot!

Joe Williams said this, and I will close with it (as we Broads both opened and closed Pitchapalooza itself):  "They say you have to do one thing every day that scares you.  I think we've gotten a month's worth of scare in, doing those pitches."

WORD, Joe.  And a hug and a high five.

Guitarists

One of the fora I belong to has a lively thread right now, discussing authors' expectations - specifically, how it feels for a writer seeing scathingly negative user reviews at Amazon and the like.

I've made a point of developing a process callus; a good level of tolerance for criticism on a piece I am working on.  I also have a sort of dividing line, I think - between actual critique and what I think of as "the guitarist at the back of the bar" (someone smarming about perceived shortcomings, but whose commentary has less meaning than the comments of those who put thought into criticism).  The Guitarist is the person watching a band on stage, sneering how much better she or he could do than those performing.  The Guitarist is speaking more for the value of what he or she has to say than in response to what's really happening live up front.  The Guitarist, in terms of literary criticism, is the person reading who "hates" a work because they disagree with choices an author makes, rather than because it's poor storytelling or just not compelling for one reason or other.  The Guitarist is the person most likely to come up with cruelty, ugliness, and insult in critique.

The Guitarist is an element I expect to crop up once I am published, but *hope* will not upset me much.  Because, very often, Guitarists represent the power of backlash against something particularly large, successful, or culturally prominent ... it's entirely possible I won't hear a lot of their thrumming.  Successful as I expect to be, I'm not under any illusions that J. K. Rowling need ever step aside to make room for my publishing accomplishments.

Actual criticism, however, fascinates me.

The critic is someone who really reads, and who develops sincere - and not necessarily emotionally-based - opinions.  The critic is someone who may well not like my work - but will be able to say that this is because the subject matter didn't engage them, or because the language was overwrought for their taste, or perhaps because the choices I made didn't work - and here's why.  This isn't someone who'll be crowing about what a hack I am, nor insulting me personally for the temerity of writing my novel at all.

The scary thing is that the critic is no one identity.

As I have learned that "historical fiction" has no single set definition - and that an agent claiming to rep it isn't necessarily the agent for me - so it is true that a reader who likes histfic, even military or religious or royal histfic, isn't necessarily going to like my work.  Even those who enjoy authors and works I consider similar enough to my own that I've used them in my proto-marketing may not glom to my stuff for one reason or another.  I think people who watch Game of Thrones might like The Ax and the Vase - but the Venn diagram illustrating both subsets and any shared audience is never going to come out to a zero sum.

It becomes necessary at some point to honestly realize, and accept, the inevitability that some people who read Ax will dislike it.  The question, then, is how much does that matter?  I'm not the sort for whom imperviousness to opinion is strong enough I'll be able to just sniff, dismiss, and say "I've sold x-number-of-thousands of copies" and tell critics and myself that it doesn't matter.  There are times my state of still being in potential - as opposed to having experienced being published ... being *seen* ... has clear advantages to me.  The future can still be so many things.  I can still hear my own chords, not that Guitarist at the back of the bar.  So far, there's no heckling and jeering to be hurt by, worried about.

I'm still nearly alone with my love of the work I was somehow able to produce.  It's recognizeable how precious a time, in some ways, this is.



At the end of the day, though ... the point of picking up the instrument is to play.  Is to go out there.  Is to present myself to everyone - Guitarists and all.

I may be nervous about that.  But it doesn't make me want to quit.

How Much Do I Love My President Right Now?

Yeah, the speech he is giving even as I type is pretty stellar and all that.

But he just asked why hedge fund managers should pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.  WOO for him ditching that "Administrative Assistant" bullshit.  (Additionally:  good question.  Let's get a *decent* answer.)

And also, you know - for growing a functional pair, and publicly making the most salient point of our day.



Get it the hell done, O Wealthy Lawyer-Politicians.  The rest of us are heartily sick of the bloody brinksmanship.  NOBODY'S little "endowments" (all entendres intended) are going to look good if this plays out.  So quit lying about your measurements and each other's.  You guys have a ****ing job to do.

Do it.

Game of Marketing

X and I were talking about The Whole Process - and, since it was something I should be blogging about in any case, I thought I would just use our email exchange.  We were talking about querying "to the market" in a sense.  Generally, we were discussing whether and how to use a popular phenomenon to sell the book - specifically, we were talking about the current success of Game of Thrones - which, though fantasy, in fact shares a great deal in common with The Ax and the Vase.



X: I've read most of the Game of Thrones series but not watched any of the show. So I can only speak to what the books contain, and anything the show presents differently or through a lens intended for mass market is outside my experience. GoT, the books, are very much a so-called 'low' fantasy series, concerned much more with political intrigue, bloodlines, religion versus state, etc. Mostly they are fantasy only in the sense that they didn't actually exist, and George RR Martin created them so that he could have 'historical' sorts of countries and kingdoms vying with each other in the way he wants them too. They aren't an alternate history to ours, but probably most of what happens in them would be plausible in our Middle Ages.


D:  That's what I meant to be saying.  It's interesting you bring this up, because it's something I should actually be blogging about. The querying process is much complicated by the question of genre - and for a LOT of people these days. For me specifically, this very phenomenon - that low fantasy, which is becoming very much more popular, is less about magic quests and dragons, but about the freedom to create realities and relations outside the constraints of "real" places (hee - like my idea of Gaul is real ...), and Game of Thrones has been a HUGE looming example of this. More than once for a while now, I have been tempted to use it as an example of the marketability of my own product. Though I think A&V is more textured and (not a great word choice probably) "psychological" than this kind of fantasy, it does have a *great* deal in common with these things, and the way they have just taken off into the stratosphere, especially with GoT's rather remarkable success on cable now, is both tempting and really problematic for me.
D:  My solution so far has been to restrain myself from comparison (it never EVER works, really, to be all "vampires are hot right now; here's my vampire novel" anyway) and insert a solitary item in my query that says my audiences include those interested in Rome, barbarians, religious history, medieval and Norse, and traditional fantasy. I'm still not sure it is satisfactory - which is why I say I should be blogging about it. Displaying the awareness (for agents to find when they Google me - and they do) without making a pointed show of it directly in the query is, I think, the best thing to do.

X:  Yeah, how do you position the book as a real-life Game of Thrones without looking too much like your grasping desperately for popularity. It'd be nice if some portion of the GoT readership comes over, but you want the work to stand on its own without looking like a GoT cash-in.
X:  There has to be a way marketing-wise to say, 'hey if you like things like GoT, you'd like this, and it's based on real-life' without the literal 'FOR FANS OF GAME OF THRONES(tm)' blazoned everywhere.

D:  This is a hard nut to crack, because the show has turned out to be successful.  It is really hard not to position yourself to catch the light of reflected glory - so, to my mind, it has the potential to be worth touching on. Even if not in my first-contact tool, the query.

X:  I don't have any idea how faithful the show is. I think you are wise to slip in a subtle link in some way though.

D:  Well, as I say, putting the old "Genre B is hot, please read my Genre B story" is awful, awful, awful form, and you hope that agents will Google you. For that matter, I maintain the links to my email, blog, and even LinkedIn profiles in my signature block, as you have seen. If they are interested, agents DO search you. I've been able to tell more than once when agents have hit the site, based on timing of queries and incidence of hits to my authorial pages - the bio, the excerpts, the author's note, - even the images. So to add a post about this seems wise, but this week I just have NOT been able to get myself to do much on there (other than b*tching about That Guy at work, and regurgitating the latest query experience). If they want to know your understanding of the market, you can display it at a blog and they don't have to slog it in a query letter. So I think I've found the solution, but I just haven't done anything about it.
D:  I've said all along that having a blog in my real name is primarily geared toward its being my authorial platform, and over time I have worked a lot to refine exactly what is presented there. It's entirely calculated that I do still include dorky asides about Star Trek or annoying stuff that happens during a week or whatever, BUT most of my posting is in one way or another written to be read by (hah) "my public" - and, by that, I intend to mean those who would read my work. I want to put out there as "this is the kind of author I am" *and* at a blog, I can break some of the rules of querying - I can also bend those genres which blend audiences with mine, without apology.  So I focus pretty heavily on my process as an author, but I can also reach out to Trek fans, and all those readers whom, if I tried to stuff them into my query pitches, would make it look like I am trying too hard.
D:  I try to keep the blog looking limber. The variety on which I post is mercenarily calculated.  What seems personal and having nothing to do with writing, usually is chosen in order to indicate something, even if it's just a sense of humor, or the philosophy behind the writer. I've also set myself the task of focusing a LOT more on posting about history, histfic, writing in its aspects beyond the shilling process - and, of course, the shilling, which a lot of WRITERS want to read about. (Yeah.  Need to get better about some of this ...)  So I'm setting myself up as something of a voice of experience even without the "authority" of Being Published - both to put on display to agents my expectations and professionalism, but also proffering the benefit of my expectations and professionalism to anyone who doesn't know this process (whether having an eye toward doing it themselves or simply being interested in it but not from the standpoint of wanting to replicate it - so, people like The Sarcastic Broads ... and also like you. I actually use you, sort of, as my model of audience for non-writers I want to keep READING).

Mary Sue and Me

For those who may not have heard the term, a Mary Sue is a character possessed of a bit more virtue, charisma, and magic than is entirely fair to impute to anybody.  Most often female, MS will always be magnificently beautiful, possessed of preternatural intellect and ability, and charismatic above and beyond the call of her role in any story.  Written by a male *or* a female author, even if it isn't a personal projection, I think the phenomenon of the Mary Sue is an exercise of wish-fulfilment; either that of vicariously seeing oneself, or seeing womanhood, by ths standard of our culture's current epectation of The Ideal.

As a feminist, I could speak volumes to the preponderance of the gender of these characters (you can find "Gary Sue's", but Marys seem to dominate the species), but this will not be my text today.


In writing about Clovis, I offered few physical descriptions of my characters.  It's something X and I have talked about often, and I've been on record before as to why I didn't spend time on it.  For one, I believe readers tend to create their own mental pictures - and I believe, honestly, this is actually central to the point and the very joy of books - so it seems silly to go much beyond "big guy, blond, long hair, healthy" or "she was small and had a mobile mouth and slim, nervous, nimble fingers" to my mind.  For two, detailed description is sometimes all too likely to be hagiography.  The historical romances I grew up with were fulsome in descritption, and unvarying in their praise and flattery, so - being a contrarian - I shied back from that.  And finally, given that I wrote in first person, and given my character, any lingeringly doting detail about Clovis' cousins, or even his wives, seemed disingenuous and out of place.  This was a man concerned with much in life, but the tender charms of those around him would not have been paramount.

But I have realized, there is another reason - and it is related to the Mary Sue idea.  I snobbishly believe Mary Sues are often avatars for authors, and serve the function of vanity.  One can be wildly magnetic, successful, gorgeous ... and, of course, unnecessarily persecuted for it ... by living through, and creating, a character with all these attributes.  It doesn't matter whether the author IS or has any of these things - or doesn't.  The point is to fantasize, and everyone does that in one way or another.

Me, I don't need this particular fantasy.

I'm that rare bird of a woman who's too confident (too vain) to wish I were more - or much less - than I am.  I'm the foolhardy and overweening thing who can pick up a fashion magazine, and - far from developing an instant eating disorder, and complex about my inadequacy - puts it down with a sense of superiority regarding my abilities and personality, my sense of style, and my maturity and curves.

But even more important, for my writing ...



I don't want to live through my characters.

This is core, this is key.  This is the deepest and most important thing.

Just as I don't want to be the Next Great Southern Novelist, because I want OUT of my familiar world, and that is why I am a storyteller:  I don't want to re-envision the people I know and spend time with them in the virtual space of my writing.  I love my friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances ... but if the act of writing is "creative" ... then stealing those people and regurgitating them into my imaginary worlds defeats that purpose, for me.

There is not one soul in my life who could have modeled for Clovis.  I took my best friend's hands to use for Clotilde, but not so much her face, her personality.  There is one minor character some might recognize as my avatar, but that one has little to do with the action overall, and the insertion doesn't affect very much.  Though I have an uncommitted idea that one guy herein could look like Shaun White, it wouldn't break my mental deal for my readers to cast him more Teutonic in their minds.  As much pride as I take in my work, my sense of ownership and control over it is not that pronounced.

In any case, I'm unsure I would like to know people like this.  Clovis speaks with my voice, and I hope his charisma is as powerful to others as it was to me.  The character is wildly fascinating, and arrests attention ...  But, as many assets as he has, I'm not sure I would much like the person if he existed.  Even his ghost, prompting me to write, and I never had a close relationship.  I was steward and servant to this king, while I wrote him; not a beloved comrade, or even a counselor.  I owed him something - I owe all my works my best - but an affectionate relationship, I don't have, intimate with this creature of such powerful charisma.  One might sooner pull an angel down by the ankle than claim community with certain characters!



With the second work in progress, it may be possible to develop more closely with my characters; yet even in this case, I don't feel "friendship" nor love for the women under construction.  For me, perhaps, being too involved would make the writing harder; I don't know.  When I was in high school, writing was a personal exercise, and I was incestuously tied up with what I wanted to write about (often historical, somewhat, even then; and yet always very much bound to whatever concerned me then ... generally, that being one boy or another).  Now that I am older, I have a view of storytelling that it is a venture out of mysef, and that it is an ADventure to give to readers.  Maybe I don't count myself much of an offering, or am just too private to be interested in stripping myself bare before an audience - whatever the cause, I just don't write so personally anymore.

Given the problems I have with my ego, I feel this is only considerate to an audience; a work mired down in my self indulgence would be no favor for any reader to endure.  (And yes, I do recognize the irony here ... in BLOGGING - and what could be more self-indulgent, really - about how kind I am, not to subject OTHER readers to exactly what I do here ...)

Of course, nobody's paid to read this site-ful of blather - and few people come here but those friends loved ones already willing to put up with such nonsense.  When paid to publish, my memoir will be no part of the product on offer for sale.  I have a responsibility to produce something better.


***


I said above Clovis speaks with my voice, and that is true.  He made me his mouthpiece, and in doing so I came to speak for his queen, his commanders, his sons, even his enemies at times.  All of them recognizeably share some aspect of the way I communicate, but each one is distinct, each one just as much distinct *from me* as the king himself.

My job as an author is to develop my own ability to use the language - yet also to use it to synthesize many people who are not (recognizeably?) myself.  I have to simultaneously command and divorce myself from those I create.  X and I had a long exchange this week about creativity and art, and I have said many times I claim little authority to call myself an artist - but I am an entertainer and I am a creative craftsman.  I take to my work with all the spirit and inspiration I think some people consider to give rise to art, but I hesitate to take so much credit - and I know I don't even aspire to anything to subjective.

I want to divert you, I want to transport you.  I want you given over, as much a I was, to my story, to the characters and what they do - to be in the setting I tried to build for you.  I want to take you where I went, and yet will be proud if what your eyes see is completely unlike what I had in my mind's eye - will be proud, if my words allow that much freedom, and yet manage enough clarity to fix a picture for you at all.

I want you to become my reader.  All I know about writing ... is how to invite you to join in that contract with me ...

New People

I have a way of limiting my thinking - not because I really want to become rigid and stay narrow, but because I am a natural contrarian, and resistance to change is a genetic imperative in Virginians.  I think I will never do "real" social networking because MySpace is, like, over or something and I hate Facebook.

A ping from QueryTracker, though, teaches me I need to watch myself.  It's all too easy to become insular, to habitutate to small selections of behavior - and, on top of being shortsighted as a writer trying to sell, that is just flat out no fun.

People are smart.  They'll teach ya, sometimes, even when that's not the point of a particular action.

Joining HFO and Absolute Write are all very well as ideas for reaching out go ... but that can't be all I do apart from blogging and making lists of agents ...


Thank goodness for people.  Otherwise I would turn into a total hermit.

Oh Yeah, It's 2011

Huh. Yes, I skipped the opportunities to stay up late for NYE (I did end up succumbing - by 9:30, as a matter of fact), and - shockingly, for I am A Writer - to go on about the new year.

I don't believe in my life I've ever made a new year's resolution, and by and large I didn't really grow up around resolutions. Aware of the concept, yes, but unfamiliar with anyone actually troubling to enact it. So new year's has always been one of two things for me, either the opportunity to celebrate, or, since my late twenties, the opportunity to privately, silently, reflect.

Couple years ago, it was about simple, unadorned, bereft depression and shock. So last year I made it a party.

This year could have gone either way, but in the end it was WORK had the final word. Yes, because instead of early dismissal, I had the pleasure of someone showing up at the office at 2:00 p.m. and spending an hour and a half sitting in my cubicle with me working on a mass of expense reporting, dating back twelve months, the deadline for 2010 having passed by two weeks ago.

To those who have protested that I should have found a way to say no, I say: I got it over with. And the boss is in town this week. Just as well to endure the tedium, and have it off my plate, as to put it of still more. In any case, that would have led to bad feeling, and who needs that. So.

I came away from the day frustrated, tired, and without time to unwind and even nap, as might have been ideal for the pulling on of impractical cuteness and shoes - and set myself a few tasks.

The wireless router had arrived (and in record time, Amazon, it must be said! so thanks). Any remaining doubt about whether to go out was dispelled when I called Roma Ristorante and they were open.

So to spinach and feta pizza, the installation of the router, and the dismantling of the tree!

Or, in fact, not - as the case may turn out to be.

The router connection instructions were great, nicely elementary and clear and quick - it was after that that the disc seemed to lose its senses. And, of course - no paper manual. And the PDF accompaniment skips installation, in favor of "advanced internet setup" ... which would be useful, I'm sure, were the installation complete. One needs must call customer service, which I'm sure is good. But at nine-thirty, pizza snug in my tum and having been up since six, I opted for the middle-aged, single homeowner's prerogative, and said hang ALL of this (including housecleaning, router, *and* tree) and Went to Bed. Mmm, now, that was delicioso.

Up and at 'em on 1/1/11, I did move to the router, which had decided to go to new, less "stuck" looking screens for the morning ... yet even less 'splicable somehow, and so it was time to shut down and get to the rest.

My brother is right when he says it's hard to spend too much time staging for actual action. I love staging for housecleaning - and did so to my pleasure/leisure. And then talked to him for a while, about 1973. Then it was on to staging for the taking down of the tree.

And the hoisting of all the other pointless and unseen (did I mention I'm single - and mom and my stepfather came over only briefly - with my friends, V and W being the lion's share of holiday activity inside this house?) decorations up to the guest room

Which itself, now, is a staging area - everything "cleaned" up from Down Here is now piled up Up There - the double bed hosting a huge jumble of acres of silver tinsel, purple orbs, sixteen kinds of painted, ceramic, silver, brass, and even musical knickknacks, shiny decorations, multicolored candles, heavy piles of lights, and a partridge in a pear tree - none of which passed the penultimate state of Putting Away - which is to say, they're in their room, but not in their closet just yet ...



I took until 11:00 doing everything, including one load of laundry - and still stopped with Swiffing; vacuuming only the upstairs.

So this morning began with the final frontier, ten minutes of speed-sucking - and NOW the house is done.


Still no router; no.

But I've got a book I vastly prefer to spend time with. And I am online, even if only in my office. That has sufficed (well!) for a year now almost exactly. A little longer, wireless-less, I count less as symptomatic of my laziness than as the badge and banner of a better priority: for reading, fella babies, is better than computing.

It is early yet - and plans to get out in the nice weather have been shifted, by yesterday's sopping rains arriving about eighteen hours late, rendering plans to go out and collect breezes and photons in my hair are no longer interesting.

Bookshelves are a grand thing. And my Queen's Chair makes such a comf place for dozing and reading.

Mmm.


***


Oh, and happy new year, fella babies. I may not have much to say about its staggering importance, but the wish to all to have a fine 2011 is intact. All the best, kids.